Jack Plank Tells Tales
By Natalie Babbitt

Yes, Jack Plank started out to be a pirate. His shipmates all liked him, and their ship, the Avarice, was certainly very beautiful. But after a while it was clear that he wasn't much good a plundering. He just didn't have the knack for it. So what to do?

Jack did the only thing he could do - he went ashore to look for another line of work. The town was called Saltwash, on the coast of the Caribbean Sea, and he had a lot of helpful advice from the people in Mrs.. DelFresno's boardinghouse. Somehow, though, each career he looked into seemed to have something wrong with it. And every night at dinner in the boardinghouse, he tried to explain why. For who would want to work where there might be a troll, or the danger of getting a crab caught in your beard? Or what about a music-loving crocodile? There were other things, too, that ran against every suggestion and took the wind out of his sails.

At last, Jack sadly decided he wouldn't be good at anything onshore and would have to go back to sea, pirate or not. But sometimes, as you probably know already, things work out very nicely when you least expect it.

Excerpt:
Jack Plank was an out-of-work pirate. He’d had a job, and a good job, too, on a lovely ship called the Avarice. But the thing is, Jack wasn’t good at plundering. There’s only one way to plunder: You have to yell and make faces and rattle your sword, and once you’ve got people scared, you take things away from them. That’s what pirates do. But Jack didn’t seem to have a knack for it.

Read More and Listen Along as author Natalie Babbit Reads Chapter One.

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